Phase 1 of NCS got off to a great start, despite the rain. Everyone started to make friends before we even arrived at the Kingswood centre in Hexham.

Once we arrived at the centre, we we’re greeted by the wonderful Kingswood staff, who gave us a quick tour. All the young people were excited for the rest of the week and we finished with self leadership. The team leaders and mentors started bonding with their teams and already the young people started to learn what is to be a leader, and devolved their listening and communication skills.

Throughout the week, everyone started to come out of their shells and challenge their comfort zones in activities like the 3G swing, leap of faith and abseiling . It was great to see the young people fully supporting each other during the activities and made us realise why we do this job. We also increased our survival skills, in case there’s ever a hunger games, in sessions like shelter building, fire lighting, bush craft and archery.

As the week progressed the teams gelled together and the activities, as well as the reflections, started to draw out important learning points like ownership and responsibility, leadership and comfort zones. We could already see the growth and boost in confidence in that everyone had.

By the end of the first week the young people had big realisations about themselves and how much potential they had to contribute to society

After week 1 and the excitement that it caused the young people were in high spirit for week 2.

We arrived on the Monday at Worksop college, and we immediately got settled into our rooms and after a delicious lunch, we got started with activities. We then split of into our teams and did sessions on how people had changed their communities throughout history. Learning about how powerful passion, responsibility and hope can be. You could see that the young people were becoming more engaged and willing to open up to new ideas. We finished the day off with lava challenge.

The following days included sessions on self awareness and first aid, as well as presenting skills and other fun activities like murder mystery, and human robot wars. All these sessions were designed to draw out the skills necessary to create an impactful social action project.

Each day ended with a reflection on the days activities and a chance for everyone to chill and do activities like swimming. Some of the highlights were the big debate and the lip sync battle. This week drew out emotions and helped the young people to transform their fears and doubts into positive actions.

Everyone had now grown and developed new skills which they will use in their social action projects to positively impact their communities and lead their lives in a positive direction.